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Svetlin Yosifov
Svetlin Yosifov
Svetlin Yosifov

Svetlin Yosifov

Country: Bulgary

I was born in Bulgaria, and I had the privilege of living in this beautiful country all my life. My employment is in a private sports club, focused on extreme sports, which involves a lot of travelling and keeps my life dynamic and interesting. Apart from this, I love travelling abroad and do this once a year for a period of two months. I always associate these trips with diving in the unknown, meeting new people and experiencing something new. My adventurous spirit is my main drive, the inner flame, that keeps me going!

Not a professional freelance photographer. I define myself as a travel-documentary-art photographer. For almost 20 years now photography has been part of my life. My passion is catching street portraits and trying to figure out my object's character.Portrait photography is the most compelling genre for me. The impact of a single photo, comes from the emotion it reflects.My Point of interest - traditions in primal and natural places like India, Ethiopia, Kenya, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba and more. I consider good photography to be much more than a snapshot or a memory, it is something that tells a story, strong enough to influence the world we live in and raise more awareness. Throughout the years my interviews and photographs have been published in many magazines and websites.

About Mursi People
Mursi People is a series of photos that were taken during my visits to Ethiopia and are part of the albums "Ethiopian tribes expedition 2018" and the "Second Ethiopian tribes expedition 2019"

The African tribe of Mursi people is isolated in Omo valley - South Ethiopia near the border with Sudan. They are one of the most fascinating tribes in Africa with their lives being a combination of brutal reality and amazing beauty. What was really appealing to me, as a photographer, was to capture and recreate the perplexing nature of their culture and way of life. Suffering from extreme drought in the past few years has made their life cruel and sometimes dangerous, but has not left a single mark on their traditions. Living among them gave the sense of extreme authenticity and in the same time felt like an illusion. Their faces filled my insatiable passion for capturing pure, untouched souls of a culture on the brink of extinction."

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Willie Anne Wright
United States
1924
Willie Anne Wright is an American photographer known for her colorful cibachrome and grayscale Pinhole Photography. Willie Anne Wright was born Willie Anna Boschen, in Richmond, Virginia. Her father was a musician and sometime-artist. She graduated from the College of William & Mary in 1945 with a BS in Psychology, and from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1964 with an MFA in Painting. She later studied at the Maine photographic workshops in Rockport, Maine and the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York. She married and had three children. Willie Anne Wright began her artistic career as a painter, teaching art classes at the Jewish Community Center, and was influenced by one of her painting instructors, Theresa Pollak. For a while, she experimented with printmaking. By 1973, she began to focus more and more on photography. Inspired by her surroundings and personal life, her first works incorporated images of her family, friends, and Civil War reenactors. Well known for her use of the old technique of pinhole, she is also an exceptional master in lensless photography, solar printing, and photograms. Some of her more well known works include her Civil War Redux series, which focuses on local Civil War reenactors whom she followed around for several years, her Pregnant Women series, which features pregnant friends of hers, and The Swimmer series, which features women lounging by poolsides or in pools. Willie Anne first experimented with pinhole photography in 1985. For a class project she had to create and use a pinhole camera. She used Cibachrome paper for use in a sixteen by twenty inch pinhole camera. With color-correcting filters she created wide-angle color prints by placing the pinhole close to the film plane. Her images were whimsical with bright colors and a vignette border.Source: Wikipedia Willie Anne Wright is a native and resident in Richmond, Virginia. She received a BS in Psychology from The College of William and Mary and an MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. She also studied photography at Maine Photographic Workshops, Rockport, Maine; Visual Studies Workshops, Rochester, New York; and VCU. Wright's paintings, serigraphs and drawings were her professional focus until 1972 when pinhole photography became her primary creative medium. Since then her lensless photography — pinhole and photogram — have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and have been included among numerous publications such as Art News, The Oxford American, Le Stenope, and The Book of Alternative Processes. Wright's works are collected privately and publicly, and are in the permanent collections of Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; High Museum of Art, Atlanta Georgia; The Mariners' Museum, Newport News, Virginia; Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, Florida; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana; Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, Alabama; Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia; New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Longwood University, Farmville, Virginia; University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia; University of Maine, Bangor, Maine; and University of New Hampshire, Dublin, New Hampshire.Source: www.willieannewright.com
Burt Glinn
United States
1925 | † 2008
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Burt Glinn served in the United States Army between 1943 and 1946 before studying literature at Harvard University where he edited and photographed for the Harvard Crimson college newspaper. From 1949 to 1950, Glinn worked for Life magazine before becoming a freelancer. Glinn became an associate member of Magnum in 1951 along with Eve Arnold and Dennis Stock - the first Americans to join the young photo agency - and a full member in 1954. He made his mark with spectacular color series on the South Seas. Japan, Russia, Mexico and California. In 1959 he received the Mathew Brady Award for Magazine Photographer of the Year from the University of Missouri. In collaboration with the writer Laurens van der Post, Glinn published A Portrait of All the Russias and A Portrait of Japan. His reportages have appeared in Esquire, Geo, Travel and Leisure, Fortune, Life and Paris-Match. He has covered the Sinai War, the US Marine invasion of Lebanon and Fidel Castro's takeover of Cuba. In the 1990's he completed an extensive photo essay on the topic of medical science. Versatile and technically brilliant, Glinn was one of Magnum's great corporate and advertising photographers. He received numerous awards for his editorial and commercial photography, including the Best Book of Photographic Reporting from Abroad from the Overseas Press Club and the Best Print Ad of the Year from the Art Directors Club of New York. Glinn served as president of ASMP from 1980 - 1981. Between 1972 and 1975 he was president of Magnum, and was re-elected to the post in 1987. In 1981, Burt married Elena Prohaska and their son Samuel Pierson Glinn was born in 1982. Source: burtglinn.com
Edward Burtynsky
Burtynsky was born in St. Catharines, Ontario. His parents had immigrated to Canada in 1951 from Ukraine and his father found work on the production line at the local General Motors plant. Burtynsky recalls playing by the Welland Canal and watching ships pass through the locks. When he was 11, his father purchased a darkroom, including cameras and instruction manuals, from a widow whose late husband practiced amateur photography. With his father, Burtynsky learned how to make black and white prints and together with his older sister established a small business taking portraits at the local Ukrainian center. In the early 1970s, Burtynsky found work in printing and he started night classes in photography, later enrolling at the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute. From the mid-1970s to early 1980s, Burtynsky formally studied graphic arts and photography. He obtained a diploma in graphic arts from Niagara College in Welland, Ontario, in 1976, and a BAA in Photographic Arts (Media Studies Program) from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, Ontario, in 1982. Burtynsky's most famous photographs are sweeping views of landscapes altered by industry: mine tailings, quarries, scrap piles. The grand, awe-inspiring beauty of his images is often in tension with the compromised environments they depict. He has made several excursions to China to photograph that country's industrial emergence, and construction of one of the world's largest engineering projects, the Three Gorges Dam. His early influences include Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Eadweard Muybridge, and Carleton Watkins, whose prints he saw at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the early 1980s. Most of Burtynsky's exhibited photography (pre 2007) was taken with a large format, field camera, on large 4×5-inch sheet film and developed into high-resolution, large-dimension prints of various sizes and editions ranging from 18 × 22 inches to 60 × 80 inches. He often positions himself at high-vantage points over the landscape using elevated platforms, the natural topography, and more currently helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Burtynsky describes the act of taking a photograph in terms of "The Contemplated Moment", evoking and in contrast to, "The Decisive Moment" of Henri Cartier-Bresson. He currently uses a high-resolution digital medium format camera. Source: Wikipedia Edward Burtynsky is known as one of Canada's most respected photographers. His remarkable photographic depictions of global industrial landscapes are included in the collections of over sixty major museums around the world, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the Tate Modern in London, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California. Burtynsky was born in 1955 of Ukrainian heritage in St. Catharines, Ontario. He received his BAA in Photography/ Media Studies from Ryerson University in 1982, and in 1985 founded Toronto Image Works, a darkroom rental facility, custom photo laboratory, digital imaging and new media computer-training centre catering to all levels of Toronto's art community. Early exposure to the sites and images of the General Motors plant in his hometown helped to formulate the development of his photographic work. His imagery explores the collective impact we as a species are having on the surface of the planet; an inspection of the human systems we've imposed onto natural landscapes. Exhibitions include Water (2013) at the New Orleans Museum of Art & Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, Louisiana (international touring exhibition); Oil (2009) at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. (five-year international touring show), China (toured 2005 - 2008); Manufactured Landscapes at the National Gallery of Canada (touring from 2003 - 2005); and Breaking Ground produced by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (touring from 1988 - 1992). Burtynsky's visually compelling works are currently being exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia. As an active lecturer on photographic art, Burtynsky's speaking engagements have been held at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; George Eastman House in Rochester, NY; The Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal; the Art Gallery of Ontario, the TED conference; and Idea City and Ryerson University in Toronto. His images appear in numerous periodicals each year including Canadian Art, Art in America, The Smithsonian Magazine, Harper's Magazine, Flash Art, Blind Spot, Art Forum, Saturday Night, National Geographic and the New York Times. Burtynsky's distinctions include the TED Prize, the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts, The Outreach award at the Rencontres d'Arles, the Roloff Beny Book award, and the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award. He sits on the board of directors for CONTACT: Toronto's International Photography Festival, and The Ryerson Image Centre. In 2006 he was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of Canada and currently holds seven honorary doctorate degrees. Burtynsky is represented by: Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto; Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary; Art 45, Montreal; Howard Greenberg Gallery, and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York; Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Hong Kong & Singapore; Flowers, London; Galerie Springer, Berlin; Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles; and Weinstein Gallery, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Source: www.edwardburtynsky.com
Christine Armbruster
Although a recent graduate of Brigham Young University with her Bachelor of Fine Art degree in Photography (2012), Christine Armbruster has managed to work on various projects and get published internationally. Working as a photojournalist in the Dominican Republic, Christine created her first solo show called "Working Identities: a collection of portraits from the Dominican Republic" which showed for a full year in 2009. This show was viewed all over Utah and various pieces won awards for documentary photography. The photojournalism work completed while there was published all of the world for papers such as USA Today and Dominican Today. Next on the list was Bosnia. Armbruster got grants and went to Sarajevo where the project, "Mortar Shells and Cigarettes", was completed. Walking the streets of Sarajevo for over a month, she captured these as a reaction to a city still recovering from war. The show exhibited in Utah as well as pieces were sent away to competitions in Texas. Prior to going to Bosnia, Armbruster started what would turn into a 2 year project in Utah, photographing town with populations of 800 people or less, called "Population 800." This small town documentary has shown throughout Utah and became her senior thesis for graduation. Since those shows have been completed, Armbruster has since traveled extensively to shoot two more projects still being edited. The first in collapsed Soviet towns and the second of Bedouins living in caves in the Arabian Desert. Additionally, Armbruster has blended her documentary interests with her commercial photography degree to work for international clients. Some of these clients have included The Travel Chanel, KT Tape, Blendtec Blenders, The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints, Chicago Cultural Center, Petra Caravan Tours, and Bedouin Brothers Tour Group. Armbruster is committed to exploring the world of social change through art. Blending her education of commercial photography with her candid aesthetic, she is able to tell stories and capture people in their natural elements. She is currently based out of Chicago, working as an editorial travel photographer. About Working Identities: The first woman in this series is the inspiration behind this project. As I was walking around the market near my Dominican home, I came across an older woman by the name of Rosa Santana. I photographed her at her vegetable cart, she then grabbed my hand and insisted that I photograph every member of her family in our little community. Leading me inside stores converted out of modest houses and through narrow alleyways into small-enclosed spaces made of stucco with a single mattress inside. Each new home, whether large or small had a family member inside to be photographed. One of her daughters particularly struck me by the way she showed me the objects on the wall illustrating her own three children. As I thought about these seemingly strange dolls and single photograph nailed to the wall, I began to realize how not only do they represent her children, but the different ways we represent and give an identity to the people around us. As I photographed in the Dominican Republic, I began to realize that I was categorizing people, trying to collect one of everything for myself. These people I was collecting were not based on location or look, but rather by profession. I looked for the stereotypical from the butcher to the security guard, but then to the boy who fixes bicycles in front of his house in Santo Domingo and the even younger children who pick coffee beans in the mountains of Jarabacoa. Each of these people have an identity created not by the symbolic objects used to represent them, but rather by an occupation. With this some gain a definition in society, while others are generalized. I chose to explore these occupations not just as types, but rather go deeper to discover each person as individuals. How each person is an individual although they may do the same thing as handfuls of others everyday, how we are all Working Identities.Source: www.christinearmbruster.com Interview With Christine Armbruster: All About Photo: When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer? Christine Armbruster: "It wasn't until I was twenty that I even considered it. I had always wanted to be in filmmaking and it wasn't until I was on my first real film set involving a week of 15-hour days that I decided I should reconsider. So i went with the next closest thing which was photography, and it just kind of stuck." AAP: Do you remember your first shot? What was it? CA: "After my freshman year of college I was inspired by a good friend who studied photography and got my first "good camera". For months I photographed so many close up shots of industrial parts and weird metal things. My first memorable photographs, however, that I really feel like began to develop my style, are a few portraits of train hoppers in Austin, Texas later that summer. I sat on the ground with them and got to know them before asking to photograph their faces covered with tattoos and their accompanying dogs. Ever since I have been a little obsessed with train hoppers and spent handfuls of time with them. It's a surprise to me that I have still yet to hop a train of my own." AAP: What or who inspires you? CA: "Life around me and newness inspires me. There was once a photographer who said that when he stays in one place for too long he goes blind. I feel very similar. I unfortunately never photograph where I live after I have been there for a few months, it is just so common to me. But that is something I am working on so I can practice sitting still for slightly longer stints. He said he hadn't paid rent in 16 years, I feel like that could become my fate which is both exciting and daunting to me." AAP: How could you describe your style? CA: "I would describe my style as very natural and quiet. I am not in your face and not trying to be loud and force heart wrenching subjects on you. I just want things to be as they are, as beautiful and simple as they are in natural light, portraying people are the strong individuals as they are." AAP: What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film? CA: "I try to use film as much as possible. Digital just doesn't do it for me. There is something natural and more real to me when I use film. Maybe it is because I slow down or take the images more seriously. I have a Bronica ETRS medium format camera with a fixed 85mm lens that is always on my back loaded with Kodak Portra film." AAP: Do you spend a lot of time editing your images? CA: "I can't hold still long enough to edit my images! I would rather be shooting than in front of a computer, which is partially why I shoot so much film. When I first started photographing, I got a job with a newspaper. With newspapers heavily editing images will cost you your job. It got me in the practice of shooting right the first time and learning how to shoot without relying on Photoshop to make my images speak." AAP: Favorite(s) photographer(s)? CA: "I am currently really into Jonas Bendiksen and Jim Goldberg. I have always loved Olga Chagaoutdinova, Diane Arbus, and Pierre Verger." AAP: What advice would you give a young photographer? CA: "Shoot all the time! Someone once told me that you need to make a lot of crap before anything good comes out of it." AAP: What mistake should a young photographer avoid? CA: "Following trends. Trends are in my opinion one of the worst things a photographer can follow. Your work will be catchy for a moment then once trends shift you will be left with having to redefine your personal style again only to possibly fall into the same trap. Shoot what you like, it will become your own style. Everyone else is already photographing the trends, try something different. Classic and well done photography will always be in style and you will always have work." AAP: An idea, a sentence, a project you would like to share? CA: "I am currently working on editing a project shot in Jordan about nomads who have been forced into settling but are resisting and moving back to caves and tents as they lived for thousands of years. That is a cool project I worked on all last winter, living in caves, collecting water, and walking with shepherds. That should be a pretty cool project once I get the storyline a little more organized." AAP: Your best memory as a photographer? CA: "I am so sentimental. I feel like every time I travel it was the best place yet, every person I photograph is so beautiful and interesting, and that every situation I have been in was the most idea. I guess that is part of the human experience and the glory of photographing. It is an excuse to walk with nomads, a reason to hitchhike across Russia, a motivation to travel and create. I already have a lifetime of memories and stories for grandchildren, and I am only 5 years into my career." AAP: Your worst souvenir as a photographer? CA: "I have a good handful of scars from not paying attention to where I'm walking while trying to get an image and a broken camera or two from sandstorms I was not prepared for." AAP: If you could have taken the photographs of someone else who would it be? CA: "Pierre Verger. He has such beautiful timeless style and dead perfect tonal ranges. He got to travel the world and experience so many things hands on from the Harlem Renaissance to religious ceremonies from underground cults in Brazil. I think he was working in just the right time and had some of the most guts from any photographer I have ever seen. He wasn't afraid and I love that about him."
Eric Kunsman
United States
1975
Eric T. Kunsman (b. 1975) was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. While in high school, he was heavily influenced by the death of the steel industry and its place in American history. The exposure to the work of Walker Evans during this time hooked Eric onto photography. Eric had the privilege to study under Lou Draper, who became Eric’s most formative mentor. He credits Lou with influencing his approach as an educator, photographer, and contributing human being. Eric holds his MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and holds an MS in Electronic Publishing/Graphic Arts Media, BS in Biomedical Photography, BFA in Fine Art photography, all from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. Currently, he is a photographer and book artist based out of Rochester, New York. Eric works at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as an Assistant Professor in the Visual Communications Studies Department at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and is an adjunct professor for the School of Photographic Arts & Sciences. In addition to lectures, he provides workshops on topics including his artistic practice, digital printing, and digital workflow processes. He provided industry seminars for the highly regarded Printing Applications Lab at RIT. His photographs and books are exhibited internationally and are in several collections. He currently owns Booksmart Studio, which is a fine art digital printing studio specializing in numerous techniques and services for photographers and book artists on a collaborative basis. Eric’s work has been exhibited in over 35 solo exhibitions at such venues as Nicolaysen Art Museum, Hoyt Institute of Fine Art, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, and numerous university galleries. His work has also been a part of over 150 group exhibitions over the past four years, including exhibitions at the Center for Photography, A. Smith Gallery, SPIVA, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, Spartanburg Museum of Art, Atlanta Photography Group, CEPA Gallery, Site: Brooklyn, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, and many more. Eric was named one of 10 B&W photographers to watch of 2018 by BWGallerist; B&W Best Photographers of the Year 2019 by Dodho Magazine; won the Association of Photography (UK) Gold Award for Open Series in 2019; Finalist, Top 200 Critical Mass 2019, 2020, 2021; Top 15 Photographers for the Rust Belt Biennial; and Lensculture B&W Jurors’ Pick 2021. His Project Felicific Calculus was also awarded a Warhol Foundations Grant through CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, NY. Eric’s work has also been published in magazines such as; Bloomberg Businessweek, LensWork, Dodho, B&W Photography, Analog Explorations, All About Photo, Black+White Photography (UK), Dek Unu, along with online articles by Analog Forever Magazine, Catalyst: Interview, Texas Photo Society, and others. There's no “given,” formula for what demands Eric’s focus as a photographer. Eric is as drawn to the landscapes and neglected towns of the American southwest as he is to the tensions of struggling rustbelt cities in the U.S. northeast. Eric is attracted to objects left behind, especially those that hint at a unique human narrative, a story waiting to be told. Eric’s current work explores one of those relics: working payphones hidden in plain sight throughout the neighborhood near his studio in Rochester, NY. Associates suggested they signified a high crime area. This project's shown Eric something very different. Felicific Calculus: Technology as a Social Marker of Class, Race, & Economics in Rochester, NY The felicific calculus is an algorithm formulated by jurist and reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) for calculating the moral rightness of an action by balancing the probable pleasures and pains that it would produce. Bentham, a utilitarian philosopher, believed this calculus could, in principle, help determine the moral status of any considered act. In 2017, I relocated my studio to a different part of Rochester, NY. Colleagues immediately started making comments along the lines of: "...that area's a war zone." My experience with the new neighborhood was positive, so I wanted to discover what visual cues others might be seeing as indicators of a dangerous environment. Several people had mentioned the number of payphones in the area, inferring that only criminals use payphones these days. There really were a lot of payphones in my neighborhood. I began documenting them, and quickly saw that far from being used by criminals, these phones served as a lifeline for some of the poorest residents in the area. Looking deeper, I found the story behind Rochester's payphones reflected an unusually altruistic ‘felicific calculus' by Frontier Communications. Instead of focusing on profits, they had decided to maintain the payphones in poorer neighborhoods for the good of the community. Many policymakers have opted to view payphones as a social indicator of crime, unfortunately leading to ignorant or even dangerous decisions. In Detroit, Michigan, politicians had all public payphones removed without studying or surveying their actual use.They simply assumed the criminal connection. This decision was based on a further assumption that everyone today must own a mobile phone. Decision-makers lacking facts or any real understanding of issues facing citizens from a different economic class just acted on a misperception. Witnessing that type of reflexive judgement from my colleagues drove me to educate myself. I photographed payphones and mapped their locations, then overlaid them with census maps showing economic status, ethnicity, age and sex, and the city crime map. There was an immediate, direct correlation between the poverty level and location of the payphones. Areas with the most payphones coincided with Rochester neighborhoods where the average family incomes are lower than $20,000 annually. There was also no correlation with high crime neighborhoods. Through Felicific Calculus I hope to challenge negative perceptions of social markers that conflate poverty with crime. Though they are relics to most of us, payphones remain important for residents trapped in lower economic circumstances. Life-Lines Throughout the United States This body of work is a series in conjunction with my project “Felicific Calculus: Technology as a Social Marker of Race, Class, & Economics in Rochester, NY,” to demonstrate how many cities throughout the US are facing the same situation. Many individuals are being left behind by technology or labeled throughout the United States due to relying on outdated technology. This series is meant to support the Rochester, NY, project to demonstrate what is occurring in the United States. “Life-Lines Throughout the United States” is a topographic survey of payphones as social markers throughout the United States, along with interactive census data to help visualize the socioeconomic relationship between the individual photograph and each location.
Lisette Model
Austria/United States
1901 | † 1983
Lisette Model was an Austrian-born American photographer. She began her creative life as a student of music. Through avant-garde composer Arnold Schönberg, with whom she studied piano, she became exposed to the Expressionist painters of early twentieth-century Vienna. She never formally studied photography but took it up in the 1930s while living in Paris. An early piece of advice received from a colleague "Never photograph anything you are not passionately interested in", became her motto. Model's images can be categorized as "street photography," a style which developed after the invention of the hand-held camera, which made quick, candid shots possible. Through her own complicated personal history, she found intensely empathetic connections with her disparate subjects. Model eventually settled in New York, where she met with quick success as a commercial photographer for Harper's Bazaar magazine and as an artist with her work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. For thirty years she taught photography in New York, where she instructed and befriended Diane Arbus.Source: J.Paul Getty Museum Lisette Model was born Elise Amelie Felicie Stern in the family home in the 8th district of Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Her father, Victor, was an Italian/Austrian doctor of Jewish descent attached to the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Army and, later, to the International Red Cross; her mother Felicie was French and Catholic, and Model was baptized into her mother's faith. She had a brother, Salvatór, who was older by one year. Due to growing anti-Semitism in Austria and her father's struggle with his Jewish-Austrian identity, he had their last name changed to Seybert in February 1903, and six years later, her younger sister Olga was born. According to interview testimony from her older brother, she was sexually molested by her father, though the full extent of his abuse remains unclear. She had a bourgeois upbringing, was primarily educated by a series of private tutors, achieving fluency in Italian, German, and French. Her private education even when the family suffered financial strain after WWI. Despite her privileged upbringing, she frequently recalled her childhood as difficult. At age 19, she began studying music with composer (and father of her childhood friend Gertrude Arnold Schönberg, and was familiar to members of his circle. "If ever in my life I had one teacher and one great influence, it was Schönberg", she said. There is little known about her art education, but her connection with Schönberg exposed her to the contemporary art scene and leading avant-garde artists such as Gustav Klimt. Early exposure to Expressionism was what perhaps influenced her interest in observing people, and subsequently, photography. Model left Vienna with Olga and Felicie for Paris after her father died of cancer in 1924 to study voice with Polish soprano Marya Freund in 1926. Felicie and Olga moved on to Nice, but Lisette stayed in Paris, the new cultural hub after WWI, to continue studying music. It was during this period that she met her future husband, the Jewish, Russian-born painter Evsa Model (1901-1976), whom she went on to marry in September 1937. In 1933, she gave up music and recommitted herself to studying visual art, at first taking up painting as a student of Andre Lhote (whose other students included Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Hoyningen-Huene). From 1926 to 1933 she underwent psychoanalysis for childhood trauma, but little is known about what exact issues to she went for other than that it is believed she was molested by her father in her childhood. These years were referred to as her lonely period, as she frequented cafés alone and struggled to immerse herself into a radically different social group than the bourgeoisie class she had grown up surrounded by. Model bought her first enlarger and camera when she went to Italy. She had little training or interest in photography initially; it was Olga who taught her the basics of photographic technique. Model was most interested in the darkroom process, and wanted to become a darkroom technician. She used her sister as a subject to start her photography. Model claimed that "I just picked up a camera without any kind of ambition to be good or bad", but her friends from Vienna and Paris would go on to say that she had high standards for herself and a strong desire to excel at whatever she did. She also stated that the only lesson she ever got in photography, other than from her sister, was from Rogi André, who told her "Never photograph anything you are not passionately interested in", a quote she would rework later and become well-known for in her teaching career: "Shoot from the gut". André showed Model how to use the Rolleiflex, expanding her practice. Her decision to become a professional photographer came from a conversation in late 1933 or early 1934 with a fellow Viennese émigré and former student of Schönberg, Hanns Eisler (who had previously fled Germany once Hitler came into power). He warned her about the need to survive during a time of high political tension, pushing her to earn a living by photographing. Visiting her mother in Nice in 1934, Model took her camera out on the Promenade des Anglais and made a series of portraits - published in 1935 in the leftist magazine Regards - which are still among her most widely reproduced and exhibited images. These close-cropped, often clandestine portraits of the local privileged class already bore what would become her signature style: close-up, unsentimental and unretouched expositions of vanity, insecurity and loneliness. Model's compositions and closeness to her subjects were achieved by enlarging and cropping her negatives in the darkroom. Additionally, her use of a 2+1⁄4 inch square negative and larger print size were stylistic choices considered unique at a time when a proliferation of street photographers were embracing what was called the minicam. Later examination of her negatives by archivists reveals that the uncropped images include much of the subjects' physical surroundings. Model's edits in the darkroom eliminate those distractions, tightening the focus on the person and excluding extraneous background information. After the publication of the Promenade des Anglais images, or the Riviera series, Model resumed her Paris street photography practice, this time focusing on the poor. Neither Evsa nor Lisette was in possession of French citizenship, and they were well aware of building political tension in Europe, so they emigrated to Manhattan in 1938. Their first home was the Art Deco Master Apartments, but it soon became too expensive and they moved several times in their first few years in New York. The couple, especially Evsa, were known to be very social, frequenting cafés, and especially places with performers that Lisette liked to photograph. Model claimed that she did not take any photographs in the first 18 months she lived in New York, but an envelope dated 1939 contained many negatives of Battery Park, Wall Street, Delancey Street, and the Lower East Side depicting ordinary American people. She quickly became a prominent photographer, and by 1941, she had published her work in Cue, PM's Weekly, and U.S. Camera. She was captivated by the energy of New York City, which she expressed through her separate series Reflections and Running Legs. Interested in American consumerism and a culture very different from her own, Model began photographing Reflections, a series that explored manufactured images, and products or consumers in window reflections. She was recognized for her radical deviation from traditional viewpoint, and preoccupation with notions of glamour and anti-glamour. This series along with her work Running Legs attracted the attention of editors Carmel Snow and Alexey Brodovitch from Harper's Bazaar, a magazine she went on to work for from 1941 through 1955. One of her first assignments was to photograph Coney Island, in which she took some of her most recognized works such as Coney Island Bather". Her vision was of great interest to the editors at Harper's Bazaar, but by the 1950s, her involvement decreased dramatically, and she only published two assignments: A Note on Blindness and Pagan Rome. In 1944, she and Evsa became naturalized U.S citizens. Letters dated that same year revealed Model's family was financially struggling in Europe, and that her mother had died of cancer on October 21. Model eventually became a prominent member of the New York Photo League and studied with Sid Grossman. Despite the League's effort to maintain that it was a cultural, photographic organization, political pressure led to the League's demise in 1951. During its existence, Model was an active League member and served as a judge in membership print competitions. In 1941, the League hosted her first solo exhibition. From 1941 to 1953, she was a freelance photographer and contributed to many publications including Harper's Bazaar, Look, and Ladies' Home Journal. Model's involvement with the New York Photo League became the cause of much strife for her during the McCarthy Era of the 1950s, when the organization came under scrutiny by the House Un-American Activities Committee for suspected connections to the Communist Party. Though the League was not officially a political organization, many of its members used photography as a means for social awareness and change, but Model did not identify herself as a political or documentary photographer. The League was eventually classified as a communist organization by the FBI, who interviewed Model personally in 1954 and attempted to recruit her as an informant. She refused to cooperate with the Bureau, leading to her name being placed on the National Security Watchlist. Because many clients were reluctant to hire somebody who was under FBI suspicion, Model encountered increased difficulty finding opportunities to work, which played a role in her focus shift towards teaching. In 1949, she taught photography at the San Francisco Institute of Fine Arts. She left for California to teach in part for economic reasons and due to her friendship with Ansel Adams, who extended an informal invitation to a teaching position. She stayed from August until at least November of that year as a "Special instructor in documentary photography" in the Department of Photography. She did not produce much of her own work at that time, possibly because of her failure to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship the previous year. In spring 1951, Model was invited to teach at the New School for Social Research in New York City, where her longtime friend Berenice Abbott was also teaching photography. The New School had a liberal, humanistic approach to education and a high number of European refugees on staff. Known for her straightforward way of addressing her students, and unorthodox teaching style, Model realized she had a talent for teaching. Her teaching notebooks make frequent references to using children's art as example to show that art was an exploration of the world, and not a replication of what was already in place. She strongly focused on challenging her students to strive for the subjective experience and the utmost creativity, sometimes inspiring students, but alienating others. She did not tolerate lukewarm effort, and was ruthlessly critical of students' work that lacked passion. She also offered private workshops with Evsa from their apartment. Model's best known pupil was Diane Arbus, who studied under her in 1957, and Arbus owed much of her early technique to Model. Arbus's husband Allan was quoted attributing her development as an artist to Model: "That was Lisette. Three sessions and Diane was a photographer." Larry Fink, Helen Gee, John Gossage, Charles Pratt, Eva Rubinstein and Rosalind Solomon were also students of Model's. For twenty years she taught the program with little variation and routinely followed the same principles. She continued to teach in New York after the passing of her husband Evsa in 1976, both at the New School and at the International Center of Photography. In 1981 she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts by the New School. In 1964, Model once again applied for the Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 1965 she was awarded the fellowship of $5,000 for a period of one year. In 1966 she went to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, with the intention to photograph anti-glamour of American culture. She also went to photograph in Italy, but due to ill health she returned to New York earlier than anticipated, and was diagnosed and successfully treated for uterine cancer. In the 1970s, Model developed rheumatism in her hands, but continued to diligently teach and photograph. The first book of Model's photographs was published in 1979 by Aperture and included a preface by Berenice Abbott. Marvin Israel designed the book. Fifty-two photographs made from 1937 to 1970 were reproduced at a large enough scale to correspond with her preferred dimension of 16 × 20 inches. In early 1970 she applied to the Ingram Merrill Foundation and was awarded $2,500, and in March 1973 she received a Creative Artists Public Service Program award for $2,500. In the later half of her career, Model's work underwent a steep drop in print production. She hadn't stopped shooting photographs; she had simply stopped printing them. Much like some of the hazier details of her biography, the reason for this change has not been conclusively identified. Speculation points toward declining health and self-efficacy, increased energy directed towards teaching, and precarious financial situation as some of the primary causes. Nevertheless, Model continued to shoot and teach until her death. She was especially inspired to photograph when away from home, such as her photographs of students in Berkeley in 1973, Lucerne in 1977, Venice in 1979, and so on. She even returned to Nice, France, for the first time in nearly thirty years. However, she did not find the same inspiration there that she once had when photographing her first influential series Promenade des Anglais. Model's image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson. In January 1976, Evsa suffered a heart attack, which required that he be constantly taken care of and monitored. His health continued to decline until his death later that same year. His death deeply affected Lisette, who continued to live in their basement apartment they had shared for many years. Even in her twilight hours, her work was exhibited in Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands, to name a few, and in 1982 she received the Medal of the City of Paris. On March 4, she gave her last lecture at Haverford college, and she died at New York Hospital on March 30, 1983 from heart and respiratory disease.Source: Wikipedia
William Eugene Smith
United States
1918 | † 1978
William Eugene Smith was an American photojournalist known for his refusal to compromise professional standards and his brutally vivid World War II photographs. Smith graduated from Wichita North High School in 1936. He began his career by taking pictures for two local newspapers, The Wichita Eagle (morning circulation) and the Beacon (evening circulation). He moved to New York City and began work for Newsweek and became known for his incessant perfectionism and thorny personality. Smith was fired from Newsweek for refusing to use medium format cameras and joined Life Magazine in 1939 using a 35mm camera. In 1945 he was wounded while photographing battle conditions in the Pacific theater of World War II. As a correspondent for Ziff-Davis Publishing and then Life again, W. Eugene Smith entered World War II on the front lines of the island-hopping American offensive against Japan, photographing U.S. Marines and Japanese prisoners of war at Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. On Okinawa, Smith was hit by mortar fire. After recovering, he continued at Life and perfected the photo essay from 1947 to 1954. In 1950, he was sent to the United Kingdom to cover the General Election, in which the Labour Party, under Clement Attlee, was narrowly victorious. Life had taken an editorial stance against the Labour government. In the end, a limited number of Smith's photographs of working-class Britain were published, including three shots of the South Wales valleys. In a documentary made by BBC Wales, Professor Dai Smith traced a miner who described how he and two colleagues had met Smith on their way home from work at the pit and had been instructed on how to pose for one of the photos published in Life. Smith severed his ties with Life over the way in which the magazine used his photographs of Albert Schweitzer. Upon leaving Life, Smith joined the Magnum Photos agency in 1955. There he started his project to document Pittsburgh. This project was supposed to take him three weeks, but spanned three years and tens of thousands of negatives. It was too large ever to be shown, although a series of book-length photo essays were eventually produced. From 1957 to 1965 he took photographs and made recordings of jazz musicians at a Manhattan loft shared by David X. Young, Dick Cary and Hall Overton. In January 1972, William Eugene Smith was attacked by Chisso employees near Tokyo, in an attempt to stop him from further publicizing the Minamata disease to the world. Although Smith survived the attack, his sight in one eye deteriorated. Smith and his Japanese wife lived in the city of Minamata from 1971 to 1973 and took many photos as part of a photo essay detailing the effects of Minamata disease, which was caused by a Chisso factory discharging heavy metals into water sources around Minamata. One of his most famous works, Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath, taken in December 1971 and published a few months after the 1972 attack, drew worldwide attention to the effects of Minamata disease. Complications from his long-term consumption of drugs, notably amphetamines (taken to enable his workaholic tendencies), and alcohol led to a massive stroke, from which Eugene Smith died in 1978. He is buried in Crum Elbow Cemetery, Pleasant Valley, New York. Smith was perhaps the originator and arguably the master of the photo-essay. In addition to Pittsburgh, these works include Nurse Midwife, Minamata, Country Doctor, and Albert Schweitzer - A Man of Mercy. Today, Smith's legacy lives on through the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund to promote "humanistic photography." Since 1980, the fund has awarded photographers for exceptional accomplishments in the field.Source: Wikipedia Born and reared in Wichita, Kansas, W. Eugene Smith became interested in photography at the age of fourteen, and three years later had begun to photograph for local newspapers. He received a photography scholarship to the University of Notre Dame, but he left after a year for New York, where he joined the staff of Newsweek and freelanced for LIFE, Collier's, Harper's Bazaar, The New York Times, and other publications. Beginning in 1939, Smith began working sporadically as a staff photographer for LIFE, with which he had a tempestuous relationship throughout the rest of his career. During World War II he was a war correspondent in the Pacific theater for the Ziff-Davis publishing company and LIFE, for whom he was working when he was severely wounded in Okinawa in 1945. After a two-year recuperation, he returned to the magazine and produced many of his best photo essays, including Country Doctor, Spanish Village, and A Man of Mercy. In 1955, he joined Magnum, the international cooperative photography agency founded by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, George Rodger and Chim (David Seymour), and began work on a large photographic study of Pittsburgh, for which he received Guggenheim Fellowships in 1956 and 1957. Smith continued to freelance for LIFE, Pageant, and Sports Illustrated, among other periodicals, for the rest of his career. From 1959 to 1977, he worked for Hitachi in Japan and taught at the New School for Social Research and the School of Visual Arts in New York and the University of Arizona in Tucson. His last photo essay, Minamata, completed in the 1970s, depicted victims of mercury poisoning in a Japanese fishing village. Smith is credited with developing the photo essay to its ultimate form. He was an exacting printer, and the combination of innovation, integrity and technical mastery in his photography made his work the standard by which photojournalism was measured for many years. In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the development of photojournalism, the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund was established after his death to support the projects of photographers working in the tradition he established. Source: International Center of Photography
Corky Lee
China/United States
1947 | † 2021
Corky Lee, born as Young Kwok Lee on June 3, 1947, in Queens, New York, was a prominent Chinese-American photographer celebrated for his documentary work capturing the Asian American experience. Lee's interest in photography was sparked during his high school years when he stumbled upon a book about photography in a library. He began photographing the Asian American community in New York City, focusing on their daily lives, struggles, and cultural events. Lee's work often centered around the theme of representation and visibility for Asian Americans in mainstream media and American society. He aimed to challenge stereotypes and amplify the voices of Asian Americans through his photography. One of his most famous series is the "Chinatown" collection, which portrays the vibrant life and culture of New York City's Chinatown. Throughout his career, Lee tirelessly documented significant events and milestones within the Asian American community. He became known as the "undisputed unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate" for his dedication to capturing moments that might otherwise have been overlooked by mainstream media. Lee's photographs were not only a means of documenting history but also served as a form of activism. He used his camera to advocate for social justice and raise awareness about issues affecting Asian Americans, including immigration, discrimination, and cultural identity. In addition to his documentary work, Lee was known for his efforts to honor and celebrate the contributions of Asian Americans to American society. He organized numerous exhibitions, events, and projects aimed at showcasing Asian American culture and history. One of Lee's most iconic photographs is the "Gathering of the Master Photographers" taken in 2003. It features a group of renowned photographers, including himself, gathered in front of the Transcontinental Railroad in Promontory Summit, Utah. This image pays homage to the Chinese railroad workers who played a vital role in building the railroad but were often overlooked in historical narratives. Lee's impact extended far beyond the realm of photography. He was a mentor and inspiration to many aspiring photographers and activists, encouraging them to use their talents to advocate for social change and celebrate their cultural heritage. Sadly, Corky Lee passed away on January 27, 2021, due to complications from COVID-19. However, his legacy lives on through his photographs, which continue to inspire and educate people about the rich and diverse tapestry of Asian American experiences.
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